Self-harm is common, especially in young
people. It increases the likelihood that the person will
eventually die by suicide by between 50- and 100-fold above the
rest of the population in a 12-month period. A wide range of
psychiatric conditions are associated with self-harm, such as
borderline personality disorder, depression, bipolar disorder,
schizophrenia, and drug and alcohol-use disorders.

The focus of this guideline is to improve the longer-term care of
people who self-harm after initial treatment of the injury or
poisoning (it covers people aged 8 years and older). It
reviews the evidence for comprehensive assessment, psychosocial and
pharmacological interventions for both the self-harm and for any
associated psychiatric conditions, staff training, and consent,
capacity and confidentiality issues. It contains all the
evidence on which the recommendations were based, including further
data on a free CD-ROM.

Now the only place to obtain this NICE guidance in
print.

Readership: The guideline will be useful to healthcare
professionals in hospital medical care and mental health services,
plus general practitioners - as about half of the people who attend
an emergency department after an incident of self-harm will have
visited their GP in the previous month.

These guidelines from NICE set out clear
recommendations, based on the best available evidence, for health
care professionals on how to work with and implement physical,
psychological and service-level interventions for people with
various mental health conditions.

The book contains the full guidelines that cannot be obtained
in print anywhere else. It brings together all of the evidence that
led to the recommendations made, detailed explanations of the
methodology behind their preparation, plus an overview of the
condition covering detection, diagnosis and assessment, and the
full range of treatment and care approaches.

The accompanying free CD-ROM contains all the data used as
evidence, including:

Included and excluded studies.

Profile tables that summarise both the quality of the evidence
and the results of the evidence synthesis.